Last Week of Summer Vacation

This is our last week before we start school again. One of the things I wanted to do this summer was blog more...that did not happen! We had a busy summer and I think I got a lot done. I managed to paint our hallway and guest room...both things I didn't get done LAST summer.

We also went down to Corpus Christi...

And had a HUGE plumbing job done...

The kids went to VBS....

We even snuck in a trip to the zoo...

So, I guess I will have to say good-bye to summer and hello to school on Monday.  I'm spending this week tying up some loose ends and doing some fun stuff to get ready for our Disney cruise in September.  I can't wait for that!!

How was your summer??

Postcard Friendship Friday #85

We just got back from a trip to Corpus Christi.  Here is a postcard I picked up while we were down there.  My husband and I are both from that area, but we had never visited the USS Lexington before this trip.  The card is supposed to say USS LEXINGTON on the top, but for some reason my scanner wouldn't pick it up.  Maybe because it was in white.  I'm not sure, but here is the card...

 The ship is now a floating museum.  We toured almost all of it.  It is a very big ship!

Here are some pictures from the post office on board.  I thought they fit in nicely with this post.

Postcard Friendship Friday is hosted by Beth at The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Wordless Wednesday

Thought this was a good post for "Wordless Wednesday".  When a stopped up toilet leads to this there really are no words!!

Wordless Wednesday is hosted by Angry Julie.

Pioneer School

My daughter is obsessed with the Little House books these days.  I couldn't be happier.  She is dyslexic and finding something for her to read that interets her is not easy!  When my son was in 3rd grade he read Little House in the Big Woods and I did "Pioneer School" for him and some of the kids in our homeschool group.  We are lucky to have an old school house here in town that is owned by the city.  It's in a little Heritage park and we rented it out.  My daughter was in 3rd grade this year and read Little House in the Big Woods (as well as every other Little House book she could get her hands on!) so I did Pioneer school again.  She LOVED it!!  Here are a few pics from the day.  I took tons of pictures but I didn't want to post a bunch of pictures of other people's children on my blog so I just have a few of my kids and me.

My kids before school started....

Nathan bought that coon skin cap a few weeks before and was happy to wear it to pioneer school.  He was one of my teen helpers that day.  He played the part well...him and another friend really got into their roles and were quite entertaining to a field trip that came through while we were there!

 Claire reading aloud in front of the class.  I still can't believe she volunteered to do that!

I was the Pioneer teacher so I dressed the part.  It was really hot!

The kids all had to dress the part too.



I found this when the kids went out for recess.  Misspelling or not, I loved that they actually LOVED school that day!



We also hand churned butter and ice cream.  Some of the moms sent up homemade bread and jellies so the kids got to try the butter on homemade bread!  The ice cream was a big hit too!



If your child is in love with the Little House books too check out this blog:  http://melissawiley.com/blog/2008/10/14/the-little-house-books-in-chronological-order/
It lists them all in order.  Claire is on the Caroline books right now, but oddly enough the last one is out of print and very hard to find.  It's going for $70 on amazon!!!  I'll do almost anything to encourage reading, but I'm not paying that!!!  We are suppose to be getting it from inter library loan from one of the 537 libraries in the country that have it.  We're still waiting for it to come in.

Monster Party!

Yesterday I co-hosted a baby shower for some good friends of ours.  The nursery is going to be done in a little monsters theme so we did a monster themed shower.  Here are some of the things we did.  It was pretty easy and turned out real cute so I thought I'd share.  These ideas would be great for a birthday party too!

Monster Cupcakes....

 I experimented with different tips.  I used a couple of different star tips and the hair/grass tip.  I think the hair/grass tip worked best and it was the easiest to do too!  (Those are the green monsters.)

This is an easy, cute idea...just use whatever veggies you want and make the dip the monster eyes.

Monster bread bowl for dip...

Pinwheels with googly eyes in the middle...

Googly eyes on bags full of popcorn.

This would make cute party favor bags for a birthday party too.

More googly eyes!

Just putting them on anything was easy, cute and helped carry the theme throughout the whole party.

Cinco de Mayo Pinata Cookies

I keep finding really cute ideas on Pinterest and trying them out!!

This is my latest:  Pinata cookies.

You make different colored sugar cookie dough and layer it in a loaf pan, freeze it and then slice it and bake it.  When I first sliced it I thought that the slices would be too small for my cookie cutter but...

They got a lot bigger in the oven!



I even managed to get two cut outs out of each slice.  You cut them out when they are still hot out of the oven.



You will put 3 of them together to make one cookie so you need to cut holes in 1/3 of them.  (While they're still hot.)  I experimented with some different size holes.  My recommendation is to make the biggest you can without breaking the cookie.



Then, pipe icing on a solid cookie and set one with a hole in it on top.



Fill the hole with small candies.  Mini M&Ms would be ideal, but my daughter is allergic to peanuts so she can't have m&ms.  I used sixlets instead, but they were a little big.  Nerds or even large sprinkles would work well too.



After you fill the space with candy, use the icing to "glue" another solid cookie on top.



 

Here is the finished product...



Like I mentioned before, I got this idea from Pinterest. 

The one I saw on there was a donkey and it was adorable!! 

It turned out much more perfect than mine did so if you want to see that example go here.

I also used Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix instead of making my own because I didn't have a lot of spare time this week.  The hardest part, to me, was layering the dough in the pan.  It probably needs to be rolled out and then placed in the pan, but that would add more flour to the dough, which tends to make for a bland cookie.  Anyway, I thought it was as cute idea and my family was more than happy to get them.  And, oh yea, I forgot to mention the best part about these cookies...

It's the plate of cookie scraps you're left with!

I had no problem finding anyone who wanted to help me take care of these!!

Candyland!

In my last post I showed you my butterfly garden themed table at our ladies luncheon.

My daughter really wanted to host a table too this year so she did hers in a Candyland theme.

This would make a really cute birthday party too!

Here is the table.  (She set it all by herself!)

We used construction paper for placemats, and I ordered the Candyland plates from Birthday Express.  The cups came from Target.  Solo makes them and they come with lids and straws!

This was the centerpiece.  It was very easy and turned out super-cute!

All we did was fill a vase with jelly beans and skewer some gumdrops. 

Tip:  don't do this too far ahead of time the gumdrops like to split.  And use the skinniest skewers you can find to help keep them from splitting.

Claire found some round flat gumdrop candies at Party City in the 15/$1 bin so we skewered them to look like lollipops.

Her dessert was Candyland cupcakes...

This is what they looked like inside.  This was a very easy and cute way to jazz up ordinary cupcakes.  All you do is divide cake batter into three bowls and make each one a different color by adding a small box of jello to each one.  It adds a fun flavor too!  Then, put a spoon of each color in a muffin cup and bake like normal.  They were very yummy!  I plan to experiment with different jello flavors in the future.

Here's the gift basket we made for the door prize...



Here it is all tied up with ribbon and tootsie rolls!



I found a lot of these ideas on pinterest.  Have you joined pinterest yet?  I put it off for a while, but I love it!!  Sooo many good ideas on there!  I've even added a pinterest button to my sidebar!